Customer groups
You can organize your customers into groups by different criteria (wholesale clients, B2B, VIP customers, etc.) to give a special storewide discount to the group members. As soon as members of a group log into their customer accounts in your store and visit the shopping cart, the group discount will automatically apply to the products in the cart.
Creating customer groups
A customer group is sort of a label that you can assign to customers in order to group them under certain criteria. You can create as many groups for your customers as you need (VIP, wholesaler, B2B, repeat customer, friends and family, etc.) and assign customers to them. A customer can belong to one group only.
To create a customer group:
- From your Ecwid admin, go to Settings → Customer groups.
- Click +Add new customer group.
- Enter the name of the group in the new field that appears. Customers which you’ll have assigned to this group will see the group name in their customer accounts in your store.
- Click Save.
Adding customers to groups
You can view to which group your customers belong and assign customers to groups in the My Sales → Customers section in your Ecwid admin:
No group means that you haven’t assigned the corresponding customer to any group.
To include a customer in a group:
- From your Ecwid admin, go to My Sales → Customers.
- Find the customer by email or name, or use filters in the left upper corner.
Customer accounts are created after order placement or registration in your store. You can also add customers manually in case of need.
- Tick the customers you want to include into a particular group.
- Click Mass Update → Add to Group and choose a group of your choice:
Group members will see what group they belong to and what discount they have when they log into their customer accounts in your store.
Setting up discounts for customer groups
On the Marketing → Advanced Discounts page, you can create discounts based on customer groups. In order for a discount to apply, customers will need to log into their account.
You can create one or several discounts in percentage or absolute values based on customer groups and subtotal. For example:
Spend over $350, save 3%
Spend over $500, save 5%
Spend over $1000, and get $100 off
For each customer group you can create an individual range of discounts.
To set up a discount for a customer group:
- From your Ecwid admin, go to Marketing → Advanced Discounts.
- Click Create Discount → Discount on cart total → Next Step.
- In the Discount value field, specify whether you want to change the price in percentage or in the absolute value. Enter the value.
- In the Limit by cart total field, set the minimum cart total above zero.
- Click Next Step.
- (optional) To create a schedule for sale, click Limit by active date and specify the date and time to start the sale. Discount will only apply during the specified period.
- Click Limit by customer groups and choose one or several groups.
To create a discount for new customers only, limit the discount to the “General (no customer) group”.
- Click Create and launch or Create without launch. Discounts created without launch can be enabled later manually from the Advanced Discounts page, or they will begin automatically on the date that you specified.
Once set up, the discount will be available for customers from that customer group. For the group discounts to apply, customers will need to be logged in to their customer account while shopping. Once they log into their customer accounts in your store, the discount will automatically apply to the products in their shopping carts. Otherwise the store will treat them as regular customers.
Examples
Let's say you sell to regular customers as well as to wholesalers. Wholesalers need to receive discounts depending on how much they buy. You can set it up either with the use of bulk discount pricing that is available to all store visitors or with the help of discounts for customer groups that are available only to logged in group members. In the latter case, your steps to configure the discounts in your Ecwid store would be as follows:
- Go to Settings → Customer Groups and create a customer group "Wholesalers".
- Go to My Sales → Customers, find the profiles of your wholesale customers and assign them to the "Wholesalers" group as instructed above.
- Go to Marketing → Advanced Discounts and create discounts based on subtotal while also selecting the Wholesalers group for this discount.
When customers from your Wholesalers group sign in their accounts in your store and go to the cart page, they will see that the discount has been automatically applied to their order subtotal (if the subtotal qualifies for a discount).
Here is an illustration of how members of the group called Wholesalers see the applied discount in the cart: